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9 of 13 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
The Roles Cast By Fate, January 25, 2003
Younger siblings sometimes find themselves overshadowed by their elder's accomplishments, much to their perpetual dismay. Still, sometimes the role cast is that of an inferior and one must accept the fact that their deeds will not shine as brightly as those that came before. For Lisa, however, its something altogether different, reaching depths of woe that few youths could conceive. No matter what she does, her sister Kazusa has done it better in numerously impressive ways. Whether its lessons in school, the playing of a piano, or ever the growth of flowers in a garden just for fun, Lisa is always told that she'll never be comparable to her sister. Even her footsteps are louder than those of her, and her abusively matriarchal family points that out to her time and again. So, as she grows she learns to hate and sometimes to lash out at a sister she's loved, wanting nothing more than to escape.Escape is sometimes a fleeting thought, however, and fate, she intervenes in the oddest of fashions. The methods used come like cruel barbs, furthering the intrigues that fill minds already fueled by loathing of the most insidious kind. Still, to understand this mindset as an observer is divine and diviner still when the account plays out before our eyes. That's where the outside spectator of the two sisters, Orochi, comes into play. Through her we see the sisters and they grow into the beasts that time has moulded, leading the pondering mind to something unpredictable - to say the least. Within the arena of unsettling Japanese horror, Kazuo Umezu is something of a legend. His works, fueled by character-driven plots that sink deeper and deeper into the realms of the distraught, capture many subtleties that other artists in the genre lack, making his something of an enigma to the artform. Such is the case with Orochi Blood, where the horror is in the finality of the story and the movement toward it, while sometimes slow-going because of the induction of oddities into the loop and because of a sequential ordering that makes you think, is ultimately rewarding. Here, watching the plights of Lisa play out as she finds herself engulfed in her elder sister's shadow is sad in its own right, but sadder still is the developments that this brings about. To me, the understanding therein, the reasoning behind why the horrible can be committed, is just as important as the deed itself. If you are excepting something ethereal to impede upon the natural order of law like is often showcased in these types of tales, then perhaps you should rethink your purchase. This is powered by the persuasions of people, the horror that comes from existence, and the need to find yourself standing upon a plateau all your own. It works in subtle ways sometimes, keeping those who need an immediate fix sometimes shaking their heads in disbelief while proclaiming how bad the conceptual work is. Still, if you can work within those parameters, keeping the textures of neglect and revenge as bedfellows in your sadistic need to understand, then I would recommend Orochi Blood.
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